The valley that runs south from Keswick along Derwentwater and on into the high fells is the classic Lakeland landscape: oak woods, dry-stone walls, slate cottages, sheep grazing on tilted pastures, and a thin road squeezed between river and crag. The narrows at the Jaws of Borrowdale, with the wooded mass of Castle Crag rising in the middle of the valley, are particularly fine.
Stop at Grange for tea by the bridge, at the Bowder Stone for the precariously balanced 2,000-tonne erratic, and at Rosthwaite for the start of any number of walks into the high fells around Great Gable. The Borrowdale Hotel and the Scafell Hotel in Seathwaite are the obvious pub stops.